One of the more common occurrences in emergency rooms at hospitals is the presence of a patient with a mass of food, typically meat, lodged in the esophagus. Removing these lodged food particles or food masses is often problematic. That is, removing food masses lodged in the esophagus is often tedious and time consuming, especially when the food that is lodged in the esophagus is a small piece of meat. One approach to dislodging the food mass is to engage the food mass with an instrument and break the food mass into small particles, effectively reducing the size of the lodged mass of food which, when successful, dislodges the food mass. As noted above, this is not always easy and can in some cases take hours to successfully dislodged the food mass.
Therefore, there has been and continues to be a need for a medical instrument and procedure that enables a doctor to quickly and easily dislodge a food mass, particularly a food mass, such as a piece of meat, from the esophagus.